Two spontaneous thoughts on this (and not speaking for hp.com)...

(a) The number of available lab engineers might influence the
    release cycle/delays as well (but I am not meaning to defend
    those horrible delays with this argument) -- while I have no
    numbers (and probably would not be allowed to share them), I
    would guess that there might be slightly more 9000 lab guys
    than 3000 lab folks...

(b) Recalling some of the recent complaints about the lack of
    CORBA and/or DCOM technology on MPE/iX, I really wonder if
    some of those people who are familiar enough with those new
    technologies to understand their value for the HP 3000 could
    pick up one of the available implementations (eg Java) and
    see if it can be run on the 3000 as well...

Lars

(don't look at me for (b) as I lack the technical background)